— In New York, the Supreme Court, Appellate Division reversed a lower court ruling that a school was liable for injuries a student sustained when she was sexually assaulted by another student in a classroom. The appellate court ruled that the offending student’s disciplinary history did not sufficiently put school authorities on notice so as to breach school’s duty to provide adequate supervision. Knaszak v. Hamburg Central School District
— In California, the Palm Springs Unified School District is redeploying school resource officers to its campuses after the completion of a five-day training program. The training covers topics such as developing relationships with students, understanding special needs students, social media and cybersecurity, crime prevention and sex trafficking.
— In Indiana, officials for the South Bend Community School Corporation is working with a private company to keep its schools safe after removing police officers from its schools. Oddly, South Bend school officials have specifically requested that the security company recruit off-duty police officers. The private firm is reaching out to local law enforcement agencies to procure officers.
— Nationally, Education Week’s 2021 School Shooting Tracker is reporting 24 school shootings, 16 of which occurred after August 1. There have been 82 school shootings since 2018. The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have interrupted the trend line. The 2020 figure, with 10 shootings, was significantly lower than 2019 and 2018, which each had 24.